Day 30 - Crossover Madness 1

It's Crossover Day, the 30th day of the session, when a bill has to pass either the House or the Senate or it's dead.

Here's where we are:

HB 388 passed the House, 96-66. Clost vote: They needed 91 to pass. What does it do? Allows you to adopt human embryos. Yeah. Very useful. Good use of taxpayer money. But Obama just lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research, right? Right. But with this bill, NONE of that money can come to Georgia. Apparently, some of our legislators would rather save zygotes than save human lives with stem cell research. "Pro-life"? Really?

SB 228 passed the Senate, 49-3. It's a terrible bill, which exempts "ephemeral" and "intermittent" streams from the statewide 25-foot stream buffer. The buffer exists to prevent construction within 25 feet of all waterways, in large part to protect our waterways from construction runoff. This bill exempts all ephemeral and intermittent streams, streams which only appear when it rains, from the buffer. The problem: When it rains, these streams appear, and whatever runs into them runs right into our water supply.

COBRA Extension: Read the post from yesterday for the details on what SB 182 would have done. It's a no-brainer. All it will do is help Georgians keep health insurance while they're unemployed, and it will cost taxpayers nothing. So it's hard to figure out why it wasn't put on the calendar today. But it wasn't. We're looking at other ways to get the extension passed, and we're hoping our legislators will do the right thing. Read the post from yesterday and stay tuned.